The Protestant Origins of the German Garden City, 1848–1910

Abstract The garden city is one of the most enduring concepts in the history of modern urban planning. At the beginning of the twentieth century, garden city movements emerged in Britain, France, the United States, and Japan—and in Germany. While the German garden city is often viewed as a later adaption of the British type, its real origins are more complex. This article situates the genesis of the German garden city project within the larger framework of nineteenth-century Protestant thought and practice. It places the intellectual, institutional and legal innovations that prefigured the twentieth-century garden city in Protestant social reform, providing a longer-term perspective on its rich and diverse intellectual origins. The German garden city, it is argued, should be considered on its own terms, rather than merely as a derivative of the British type.